Al-Ahram Weekly 12 - 18 August 1999 Issue No. 442
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Monthly supplement Books for a burning month Holiday reading and what the writers read Translating Egypt Hala Halim finds consummate translation skills and less compelling ethnography in Ahdaf Soueif's most recent counter-narrative Extract from The Map of love By Ahdaf Soueif Metropolitan musings A new French translation of a Gamal El-Ghitani novel appeared last month. David Tresilian, in Paris, interviews the translator and meanders through the novel Francophone readers I know what you read this summer All writers and artists intereviewed by Hala Halim An elusive graveyard Ra'ihat Al-Burtuqal (The Smell of Orange), Mahmoud El-Wardani, Cairo: Maktabat Al-Osra (Family Library), GEBO, 1999. pp115 A century of fantasy Awalim Borges Al-Khayaliya (Borges's Universe of Fantasy), translated and introduced by Khalil Kalfat, Cairo: Afaq Al-Tarjama (Translations) Series, Cultural Palaces Organisation, July 1999. pp140 Author and character without disguise Manamat 'Amm Ahmed Al-Sammak (The Dreams of 'Amm Ahmed the Fishmonger), Khairi Shalabi, Cairo: Al-Hilal, 1999. pp285 What the winter said Youssef Rakha discusses Salah Abdel-Sabour's Layla wal-Majnoun, now part of the Kitab fi Garida Series, a joint project of Al-Ahram and UNESCO, translating an extract from the play Thus spoke the Ustaz To see other book supplements go to the ARCHIVES index.    Illustrations courtesy of International Commitee of the Red Cross "Folk drawings and tales", Cairo, 1996

I know what you read this summer

All writers and artists intereviewed by Hala Halim

* Youssef Abu-Rayya, novelist
I find that summer is inimical to writing, so there's little to do except read -- as long as it's light reading, of course. A real good read was Al-Walah Al-Turki (Turkish Passion), the Arabic translation of Antonio Gala's novel, the setting of which is Egypt, Syria and Turkey, and which tackles East-West relations. In fact the Syrian translator of the novel, Rifaat Atfa, accompanied Gala when he visited Syria, but I find that he made nothing out of the golden opportunity to observe Gala's reactions that was offered him. He could have kept a diary of the trip, taken notes, compiled material for a book on Gala; instead he merely tells us in the introduction that he met Gala in Syria. It seems we Arabs are not good at this sort of thing -- the note-taking, the diary-keeping...etc. At the moment I'm reading Sab'a (Seven), a novel by the Saudi Arabian writer and diplomat Ghazi Al-Qusaybi. The novel surpasses by far the standard of Saudi Arabian fiction written in Saudi Arabia itself -- as with the example of Abdel-Rahman Mounif's work, the case of Sab'a has confirmed to me that Saudi Arabian novelists living abroad can allow themselves an amount of leeway undreamed of by their compatriots at home. Sab'a is a novel that satirizes and derides contemporary Arab reality, and therefore, though the narrative moves from one Arab country to another, Qusaybi has made sure to give all these countries only one, fictional, name: "Arabistan X"; still certain carefully ciphered details provide clues as to which Arab country he's talking about. What amused me is that the flavour of the sarcasm in the novel is very Egyptian, possibly because Al-Qusaybi studied in Egypt. This would also explain why certain episodes -- such as a love affair, instances of corruption -- are set in what seems to be Egypt and not Saudi Arabia: there's this sense that Egypt can accept what other Arab countries will not. As far as Egyptian fiction is concerned, I've read Mohamed El-Bisatie's Wa Ya'ti Al-Qitar (And the Train Comes), Khairi Shalabi's Manamat 'Amm Ahmed Al-Sammak (The Dreams of 'Amm Ahmed the Fishmonger) ,Radwa Ashour's Atyaf (Phantoms), Mohamed Nagui's Maqamat 'Arabiya (Arabic Maqamat), and Youssef El-Qa'id's Arba'a Wa Ishrin Sa'a Faqat (Just Twenty-four Hours) -- the latter being a somewhat old-fashioned indictment of city-life, as opposed to the purity of life in the village.

* Mahmoud Amin El-Alim, critic
I can't say I've been doing any summer reading: work-wise, I'm still in winter, trying to wrap up several tasks and projects I'm late with. I'll be launching a new magazine soon, called Al-Magalla Al-Falsafiya (Magazine of Philosophy), and I'm finalising the next issue of the periodical Qadaya Fikriya (Cultural Issues), which will focus on globalism, modernism and post-modernism in contemporary Arab thought. Once I get all this out of the way I can start reading all the new books that have been piling up on my desk. My top priorities are Ibrahim Aslan's Asafir Al-Nil (Sparrows of the Nile), Radwa Ashour's fictional autobiography Atyaf, as well as works by two writers whom I find really remarkable and who don't seem to be getting the attention they deserve: Mohamed Nagui's Maqamat 'Arabiya and Abul-Ma'ati Abul-Naga's Fi Haza Al-Sabah (On that Morning).

* Tharwat El-Bahr, artist
For a few years now, I no longer read new books, because I've discovered that what I really enjoy is re-reading books. Only yesterday I finished reading the French translation of Naguib Mahfouz' Awlad Haritna (Children of Gabalawi) -- I'd read it a long time ago and since it's unavailable, despite the laurels we keep bestowing on Mahfouz, I had to read it in translation. I've also re-read Gamal Himdan's seminal work Shakhsiyat Masr (The Identity of Egypt), a book of Ahmed Bahaeddin's collected articles and essays, as well as some poetry -- Amal Donqol's Harb Al-Basous (The War of Al-Basous) and Salah Abdel-Sabour.

* Salwa Bakr, novelist
Well, I haven't been reading any fiction lately because I'm writing the sequel to my novel Al-Bashmouri, and reading other novels while I'm in the process of writing interferes with my work. What I have been reading is all sorts of sources on the Middle Ages for background to the sequel to Al-Bashmouri. So I'm delving into reference works on the history, literature and sciences of the period, both by medieval Muslim writers and modern scholars. At the moment, I'm reading Bashir El-Siba'i's translation of Claude Cahen's book on the Crusades, Al-Hiroub Al-Salibiya, and another book on the same subject written by a group of scholars from the Soviet Union (it's not a very recent book), as well as Adam Mez's book on the Islamic civilisation, and Soad Maher's Al-Bahariya Fi Masr Al-Islamiya (The Navy in Islamic Egypt).

* Mohamed El-Bisatie, novelist
I always look forward to summer so that I can re-read the classics; in winter I never get the time because I'm always busy reading all the new works on the market. So this summer I'm reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, Tolstoy's War and Peace and Anna Karenina, André Malraux's Man's Estate and Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury -- and, well, I think that's quite a substantial menu for the summer. The only contemporary novel I'm reading this summer is Antonio Gala's Al-Walah Al-Turki (Turkish Passion).

* Alaa El-Dib, novelist
For me, the most important book of the year, not just the season, is Hans-Peter Martin and Harold Schuman's Fakh Al-'Awlama (The Trap of Globalism), translated by Adnan Abbas Ali: a well-researched, well-documented book that explains the economics behind the new world order. Two writers who are far from new but whom I'm just discovering this summer are Amin Maalouf and Isabel Allende. Maalouf is adept at breathing life into archival, historical material; Allende, whose Bayt Al-Ashbah (House of Spirits) I've read, has a profound understanding of reality. I've also been reading the Polish poet Zbizniew Herbert, and am convinced that writers from "little Europe", such as Poland, are more relevant to us than those of "big Europe" -- as in France and so on.

* Sabri Hafez, critic
This summer I've been reading novels by young Egyptian writers: Shihata El-'Iryan's Dikka Kashabiya Tasa' Ithnayn Bil-Kad (A Wooden Bench Barely for Two), Ibrahim Farghali's Kahf Al-Farashat (The Cave of Butterflies) and Sahar El-Mougi's Dariya. I'm currently writing a book on the poetics of the new novel in Egypt, or you might call it post-modern narrative, because it seems to me that these young writers have made a break with the past not dissimilar to that of post-modernism in the West. They have made a break with the epistemological orientation of all previous narrative in Egypt in favour of an ontological orientation that focuses on self-knowledge. Needless to say, this shift also affects the strategies of writing, the technique plot, time... etc. With this move, comes a parallel one, namely that for the first time we find a generation of outstanding women writers who are of more or less equal number to their male counterparts. The growing number of women writers also means that their works are no longer marginal but are part of the mainstream, which in turn affects the texture of their writing. Other than that, I've read Radwa Ashour's Atyaf which gives a terrifying picture of what is happening in the universities in Egypt; more than anything one has heard, this book brings home the corruption in academia. Mohamed El-Bisatie's Wa Ya'ti Al-Qitar is an accurate and also poetic depiction of Egyptian village-life.

* Edwar El-Kharrat, novelist
I've been reading fiction by the "'90s writers": Muntassir El-Qafash's Shakhss Ghayr Maqsoud (The Wrong Person), Ahmed Gharib's Sadmat Al-Daw' 'Ind Al-Khiroug Min Al-Nafaq (The Shock of Light When You Emerge from the Tunnel), and Nora Amin's Halat Al-Da'f (States of Weakness). Although each has his or her own style, the '90s writers do have some general features in common, among them the nonchalance with which they treat important public issues, the writing of the body as an object, the sense of anxiety, of being hunted, the fragmentation. Otherwise, because I'm working on a new novel, Sukhour Al-Sama' (The Boulders of Heaven), I've immersed myself in reading anything related to Upper Egypt, the Copts, and Coptic monks from the 1930s and '40s to the present -- all that library which includes the "Senexar" (the book of the lives of Coptic saints), Bustan Al-Ruhban (The Orchard of the Monks), Tarikh Al-Rahbana Wal-Dayriya Fi Masr (The History of Monks and Monasticism in Egypt), and so on.

* Ibrahim Mansour, critic
I'll mention only the books I enjoyed reading (there are others I read this summer but since I didn't find them that good, I'd rather not mention them): Mohamed El-Bisatie's Wa Ya'ti Al-Qitar, 'Alaa El-Dib's 'Iyoun Al-Binafsig (Violet Eyes), Mohamed Shukri's Magnoun Al-Ward (The Flower-crazed Man), Nora Amin's Halat Al-Da'f, Hassan Soliman's Zalek Al-Ganib Al-Akhar (That Other Side), Ibrahim Daoud's La Ahad Huna (Nobody Here), Sa'dani El-Salamoni's Tisbah Ala-Kheir (Sleep Well), Aliya Abdel-Salam's Taht Khat Al-Istiwa (Below the Equator) and Ahmed Mursi's Suwar Min Album New York (Pictures from the New York Album).

* Fatma Moussa, critic
I haven't done much "summer reading", as I've been busy writing reports on books submitted for publication, and putting together a book on Naguib Mahfouz and the development of the Arabic novel. But I'll be taking two weeks off soon, and I'll be packing quite a few books into the suitcase I'm taking to the North Coast. For one thing, I'll be re-reading [Moussa's daughter] Ahdaf Soueif's The Map of Love, because I'm going to start working on the Arabic translation. I'm also looking forward to reading the second volume of Doris Lessing's autobiography, Walking in the Shade. Now that I mention Lessing, I'm reminded of the spate of obituaries about her that were printed in some Egyptian publications a few months ago, when in fact it was Iris Murdoch who had died. I'd like to take this occasion to stress that Lessing is alive and well, and indeed has recently won a prestigious international literary award! I'll also be taking along three huge volumes of Hemingway -- short-stories and novels -- because we, meaning the Supreme Council of Culture, are organising a conference on him to commemorate the centenary of his birth. I read a lot of Hemingway years ago, and I'm sure I'll enjoy re-reading him.

* Abdel-Moneim Ramadan, poet
I'm reading, concurrently, two works by women -- Fatima Mernissi and Anais Nin. What prompted me to read Nin in the original is actually my son's fluency in English, which mortifies me because I myself am a product of Nasser's schools with their poor instruction in foreign languages. So I've been reading Nin's Delta of Venus with the aid of a dictionary. Part of why I chose this book is that her language is relatively accessible. But there's also the fact that, given that this is erotic writing, it's not likely to be translated into Arabic in the near future since book banning is on the cards these days. And in fact of all Nin's works, including the many volumes of the diary, only one collection of short-stories has been translated into Arabic in its entirety, in addition to some texts printed here and there. It was actually the anthology of women's erotica compiled and translated into Arabic by Sonallah Ibrahim that first brought Nin to my attention; there he has one text by her. It's interesting that more erotica by men than by women has been translated into Arabic -- Nin's friend Henry Miller, for example, has been translated; it's as if our culture has a higher threshold of tolerance when it comes to men's erotica. Since surrealism holds a great deal of interest for me, I'm also hoping to find out more about Nin's connection to the surrealists, though that probably comes out more in the diaries. As for the Moroccan feminist Fatima Mernissi's fictional autobiography, Les Reves des Femmes: Une Enfance au Harem there's a very interesting story to the Arabic translation: there's a Syrian translation the title of which is a literal rendition of the original title (it's called Ahlam Al-Nissa: Tifoula Fil-Harim), and there's a Moroccan one under the title of Nissa' ala Agnihat Al-Hulm, undertaken by Mernissi's friend Fatima Al-Zahra' Arizyul. In her introduction to the Moroccan translation, Mernissi draws the reader's attention to the copyrights' infringements by the Syrian translator, and explains that she herself invested a huge amount of time in working with the Moroccan translator, only to discover the hijacking of the text in Syria. She also warns us against reading the book as her autobiography: the mother in the book is not her own mother, nor is the child herself, for, as she says, if she had written a straightforward autobiography, the reader would not have been able to get through two paragraphs as her childhood was very boring. So the seven-year-old child's narrative is more of an imaginary autobiography.

* Adel El-Siwi, artist
In terms of Egyptian fiction, I found Ibrahim Aslan's Asafir Al-Nil very engaging, as was Mohamed El-Bisatie's fictional autobiography, Wa Ya'ti Al-Qitar. This summer I also read, with great enjoyment, Maw'id Sirri (Secret Rendezvous), the Arabic translation of a novel by Kobo Aba -- one of Japan's foremost contemporary novelists. It's about a man whose wife is taken to hospital but never returns; he discovers that she actually didn't go to hospital... It's a very Kafkaesque novel -- all portents lurking behind apparently benign phenomena; it's a mixture of fantasy and science fiction. I don't usually go for this sort of thing -- it's always seemed to me very facile; here, though, I felt it was justified, and that it was as good as any other way to depict the fascism of Japanese society. I'm working on a translation of an extract from an Italo Calvino text, Sotto Il Sola Giaguaro (Under the Sun of the Jaguar). His idea was to write a novel about the five senses, because language, as he saw it, was too cerebral and could not adequately express the senses. So I'm translating the chapter dedicated to the sense of hearing, "Il Ra Im Ascolto" (The King Listens). And then there's Proust, whom I'm re-reading for the nth time and, as always, discovering all sorts of new things about -- clues, keys and so on. I'm also reading Joseph Kosuth's Art After Philosophy and After which has just come out; it's a sequel to his early 1960s essay Art After Philosophy, which was instrumental in establishing conceptual art. In the new book, though, the tone is surprisingly sober and there isn't a sense that this is one of the important figures of the vanguard.

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